


we two meet in the dark; let our love be the light

by lionettscourage



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Temporary Character Death, mild e114 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27371347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionettscourage/pseuds/lionettscourage
Summary: Two strangers meet in the dark and talk about the love of a woman.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Zuala, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Yasha/Zuala (Critical Role)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 140





	we two meet in the dark; let our love be the light

You come to consciousness slowly. Or rather, you come to unconsciousness slowly - you remember going down, and remember slipping away, and this is distinctly not what it feels like when one of the healers brings you back up. There is so soft grip from the bony but gentle hands of Caduceus, no anxious blue face floating in front of your own. Instead, you lay in a spaceless void, feeling the icy cold that accompanied that final strike sink into your frame. You have the thought, somewhere in your mind, that it is horribly unfair that once you’ve died, your injuries stick with you. You are so absorbed in remembering it - the missed punch, the swiping frozen blade - that you almost miss the vague outline of a form accompanying you in the darkness. Not for the first time, you curse your meagre human vision. As you squint into the space next to you, the form seems to coalesce - a woman, with brown eyes and a mess of tangled hair, crouched on her haunches next to you. 

“Hello Beauregard” she says, solemnly, and reaches out a hand to help pull you up. Her grip is firm, strong calloused hands - warm hands - even though you have to assume that she’s as dead as you are. If not more. And try as you might, you don’t recognize her at all - not from your life, not from illustrations; so you say the first thing that comes to your mind.

“You don’t look like the Raven Queen.” 

That garners a small laugh, and those warm eyes search your face “Indeed I am not” she says. “I was just here because I was waiting for someone else to come through that gate today” 

You look down, scoffing. It figures really, that you would make it all the way to the afterlife and find someone elses’ ghost. There is no one to wait for you here anyway - the only person who might have, at one point, isn’t actually dead - and the cold memory of that empty grave causes you to shiver. No one has ever been waiting for you, and you don’t know why you expected death to be any different. 

“Not that I am disappointed, Beau” - and you are not sure if it is the remembrance of that empty gravesite and the way your hand sought comfort in another’s, or if it is the way she says your name; that soft inflection, the emphasis on the ‘oh’, exactly like Yasha. Perhaps it is something else entirely that makes you realize with a start - with a horror almost - that you know exactly who this is. 

You look into the depth of those warm brown eyes and ask with a broken hesitancy.

“Zuala?” 

She smiles and sinks to the ground so she is sitting next to you, and you know that you are correct. 

“So when you say you were waiting for-” and you are not sure what compels you but you have always been one to be bluntly, brutally honest “you know that she comes back easier right? She doesn’t fully… well she doesn’t fully die. So if you’re thinking that she’s going to come through that gate then…” your brain catches up to your mouth and you trail off then, considering that maybe telling a grieving dead woman that she probably won’t see her wife again is. Well. not the best course of action. 

“Yes, well, hoping for something and thinking that they will happen are two different things, are they not?” Her arms wrap around her knees and it wrenches your heart to see this woman - this warm, living presence that for so long you have only known as the ghost chasing Yasha. You have a sudden, desperate need to apologize. 

“I am, so so sorry” you say and it provokes some sort of wry chuckle from the woman (her wife, her wife, her wife, you repeat to yourself)

“For what, Beau?”  _ oh _ , and there it is again, that gentle push of your name that sounds so much like Yasha (her wife, her wife) And there is so much to be apologized for that you don’t fully know-

“Oh I don’t know, for… for the fact that you died, for the fact that it’s probably not going to be her coming through that gate for a good long time, for the fact that I-” it rushes from you like a river and gets stuck on that one essential fact “-for the fact that I-”

A hand, calloused, warm, (dead, dead, dead), reaches out to cover yours. “She needs to hear it you know, because I don’t think she’ll believe she’s worthy until she does” 

It twists inside you; gnawing, horrible guilt, that age old feeling that you are taking a place that was never yours.

“How can you say that?” you ask, and you wish your voice didn’t sound so goddamn tortured but it  _ does  _ and you  _ are _ “How can I be here, see you, talk to you and go out there and…” you look away and squeeze your eyes shut because you can’t bear to look at her strong profile, this woman who loved her and lost her and still loves her. 

“Because how could you ever deny that woman anything? Trust me Beau, I know what it is to love her. I loved her so much I died for her.”

And if that isn’t like a bucket of cold water washing over you, you don’t know what is, because she is  _ dead _ and so are you and gods damn it Yasha has already lost so many people. Even if you don’t matter to her as much as you wish you did, she can’t lose another, and you hate yourself because this is your fault, your need to get up in the action, to take those hits and you know in that deep intrinsic way of knowing another like yourself that Yasha will blame herself for it. And you do, you do love her, and that is so fucking terrifying in the face of it all. 

You are struck, suddenly, by the remembrance of that folded parchment that she had handed you earlier today, before your world had be flipped by the murder of your employer (and you hate, hate yourself that you missed that one. You managed to put so much together, but when it came to it, you had missed him, passed on by like a ship in the night). You had tucked that paper into your belt and as you frantically search, you find it, still folded, right where you had put it. The crease is careful and worn, just like it was when Yasha had given it to you. You open it and

And

You want to fucking cry because the paper is blank, just a simple sheet of parchment. This place is kind enough to clothe you, and stitch you back together, but it doesn’t take away the icy touch of death, and it certainly doesn’t allow you to look upon those words that she had written. Your old self might have thought that maybe that paper actually had been blank, that it had been some sort of elaborate prank of Yasha’s; but this you knows Yasha better than that, and trusts her too. You never read the words and so they are not here, that is all. 

The hand reaches back out to yours and squeezes, brushes your arm on the way up to your face. It is gentle but firm in the way it catches you by the chin, and as you look up you are made to remember that that hand is connected to her face and she is beautiful and kind and you understand why Yasha would never want to leave this woman behind. (You’ve always understood that you think, since the moment that you learned that Yasha had been married, because you’ve always wanted to be chosen, and there's no way that you would begrudge her that having made that choice for another). 

“They  _ will  _ call you back Beau. If there is anything that I have learned watching your friends, it is that they will call you back.” Her hand drops from your chin and she leans back, propping herself up on her elbows “before you go though… tell me about her?”

You glance over, and those brown eyes are still trained on you. It's still too much and you look away quickly. “What do you want to know? You’re the one who was married to her” It comes out more harsh than you intended it to, but most things do in the end. You’re not bitter, and yet you can’t help it in the face of the monumental connection that they have, in the face of her here, waiting for Yasha even in death.

“Oh and here I thought I was being nice, giving you the opportunity to talk about your little crush” You splutter and her laugh is loud and hearty (and dead, you remind yourself, because every moment you spend here, you begin to wonder if this is what it will be for the rest of it. Sitting in the dark with this woman, twinned in love, waiting for another form to come through that gate)

Somewhere in the back of your mind, just a tickle at the back of your consciousness, you hear the voices of your friends, feel the weight of Yasha’s hands as she lifts your head into her lap and strokes your hair. They will bring you back, you remind yourself.

You lean back and look over at her, finally meeting her eyes and forcing yourself to hold that gaze. You are not so cruel, you think, to deny this woman the only contact that she may have had in a long time just because of your own guilt. “What about you huh? I’m sure you’ve got plenty of stories”

She grins, happy and open, and nudges her shoulder into yours. “Well, one for one then?” she asks “It seems only fair”. 

“Well” you start “I don’t know if you know this, but she’s got these wings…”

It’s strange, the haze of not-time that you find yourself within. You are here, talking to Zuala, and you are there, dead, with the clerics fussing over you and Caleb crying and Yasha, stone silent, brushing your hair with these small repetitive strokes, as if she can just smooth it enough then you will come back to her. And you would, you know that, you would go back for anything in the world. But that doesn’t mean that it tugs at your heart any less when Zuala (because she isn’t some echoing ghost, because she’s Zuala now, solid and warm, with kind eyes and calloused hands) lets out her big echoing laugh when she tells you about a younger Yasha, small and strong and so so sincere. It doesn’t tug any less when she adjusts to rest her shoulder against yours as you tell her about Yasha leaving, in some silent gesture of comfort. She is so different than you’d imagined - because of course you had imagined her, 100 variations over, this woman who meant so much to Yasha - but you can see the echo of Yasha spread across her anyway. 

The part of yourself that is still with them, your party (your family), registers the anxiety that they feel. You are lifted, at some point, by Yasha - they must not have the components for the spell, because they are taking you back somewhere rather than doing it right then. You are floating, and then there is blue, and you know that you are home in the tower. 

The part of you that is with Zuala sits, reclining, and you tell stories. You find yourself folding and unfolding that blank piece of parchment, twisting and turning it in your hands. Sometimes, you open it and glance down, as if hoping for the words to materialise there. They don’t. They never do, and yet you cannot stop, even when Zuala glances sidelong at you by the fifth time you’ve done it. You are waiting. 

And you are waiting. 

And waiting. 

It feels like an eternity, and with every story you exchange - telling of Yasha’s discovery of pancakes, and of her love of flowers, and of her ripping the damned wings from Obann - you feel yourself grow more solid in this place. It is not that your connection to the other world (the real world, you have to remind yourself) has been cut, but it stops holding such weight in your mind. You are here and present, and Zuala is right there. The weight of her hand in yours as you sit her in the twilight space blurs with the weight of Yasha’s as she sits vigil at your bedside. Both are warm and gentle and so strong. Yasha would be comforted by this, you hope, that the two of you are here, waiting for her. Time blurs here, and it feels as though you spend minutes, maybe days here waiting. And then… finally… there is a tug. Something pulling you back - it is as though you have been stretched away, and with a snap your connection to that place grows stronger. You can hear them - Caleb, and Jester, and Yasha making their pleas to you. You know that you have a choice, and you know that there is only one choice to make. And yet, as you look into Zuala’s warm, sad eyes, it is hard to say goodbye. 

But you do. 

There is a family, and a poem, and so many years waiting for you. So you say goodbye, and your eyes slip shut, only to open in a different, more familiar space. Yasha’s hand is still in yours, and her face hovers above you - looking for some sign that she has not had to lose another. 

You squeeze her hand with what little strength you can muster and she gives a choked sob. Above you, her face still hovers and you manage to mumble out a small 

“Yash…” before your wounds and exhaustion catch up to you. She reaches out and oh so softly brushes the hair off your forehead. 

“It is alright Beau.” she says, with that soft voice of hers. “You should get some rest”. Your eyes flutter shut at the reassurance. Her hand still rests gently in your hair, and in your final full moments of wakefulness, you feel her thumb brush across your temple again, and then, in that same spot, the brush of her lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is very much me being incredibly self indulgent - I've ignored probably every rule that DnD or Critical Role has surrounding death - but I really just wanted to explore the concept of Beau getting to meet Zuala and the guilt that she would feel. I've also chosen to interpret the fact that Yasha's aasimar heritage means that resurrection doesn't need components as the idea she would never end up in this nebulous middle space where Zuala is, mostly just for the tragedy of it all. Many thanks to avalencias for the encouragement & sourslip for helping me flesh out Zuala!


End file.
